Tuesday, April 16, 2013

There are few types of art that fans
get more clannish about than music. Fans can be downright dogmatic.
The classic rock fans sneer at the heavy metal fans, then the heavy
metal fans sneer at the country fans and rinse repeat. After awhile
it can start to sound like one annoying SAT question. I was lucky
enough to be raised in an environment where all sorts of music was
played. My Mom listens to the Statler Brothers and AC/DC with
everything in between, so sonic schizophrenia is something I come by
quite righteously. The beauty of this is that the odds of missing out
on some truly great music becomes significantly lowered. It also
grants me the opportunity to horrify some of my less broadminded
friends.

One of the best genres to do this with
is rock & roll. Sure, most love The Beatles, but when it comes to
hard rock, that's when it can get elitist. That's why artists like
The Dictators still don't get the critical love that they deserve,
and yet folks wet their collective pants over dinosaurs like Eric
Clapton. Face it, Clapton was a born dinosaur, especially after the
dissolution of Cream.

In the pantheon of underrated hard rock
bands, one of the greatest examples is the Canadian group Helix.
While they did receive some airplay with their anthem, “Rock You,”
they ended up flying under the radar as inferior bands got bigger
notice. In a era where Bon Jovi was huge, you can feel my dismay. One
of the best things about Helix is that while they didn't exactly
reinvent the wheel, they instead took the wheel and made it the best
damn one that they could. Like alchemists of rock, they were even
able to get away with one of the biggest cardinal sins of
1980's...the dreaded ballad! Yet, when Helix does a ballad, say
something like “Make Me Do Anything You Want” or “Dream On,”
it has texture and heart. So many bands were like a dead eyed
stripper grinding dutifully for your money, whereas Helix is the one
that will actually make eye contact, perform like they mean it
because maybe,just maybe, they do actually mean it.

My first big exposure to Helix was
landing a copy of the video compilation, “Red Hot Rock.” At the
time, the main selling point for me was more based on The Tubes
content than anything else. It may seem strange nowadays with the
blessed advent of sites like YouTube and Vimeo, but accessing certain
music videos back a few years ago was more the luck of the draw than
anything else. Stranger still, there were a handful of videos made
that were definitely not MTV friendly. While the PG versions of these
clips would occasionally play, their more R-rated incarnations were
left in the ether of the occasional showing on the then brand new
Playboy channel, in nightclubs and the burgeoning frontier of VHS.

One of the bands that took advantage of
this new format was Helix, who had not one but two music videos on
“Red Hot Rock.” There's the wonderfully goony clip for “Rock
You,” featuring the band on some kind of post-apocalyptic chain
gang. They break free early on and are greeted with lots of fire,
greased up topless warrior women and some of the worst background
dancing in music video history. This is the kind of case where the
biggest boobs in the video are the non-Helix dudes.

The second saucy video is their cover
of Crazy Elephant's 1969 hit “Gimme Gimme Good Lovin,” featuring
the time worn plot device of a Miss Rock Fantasy beauty pageant. Like
“Rock You” before it, there were two versions, including a PG one
as well as an R-rated one. You can guess which one made it on “Red
Hot Rock.” Hint: it's the one with the titties.

The video is a fleshy splendor of
lovely girls, ¾ of which cannot dance to save their lives, echoing
their brethren in “Rock You.” Some like to focus on the obvious
aspects here, namely the jiggle factor, some of which included scream
queen Brinke Stevens and Traci Lords, who gets to look smashing in an
S/M style getup while destroying produce with a sledgehammer. Hey,
it's still better than “Blade.” But forget all that, because the
inner core of amazement belongs to the band, between the song, which
is that rare cover that improves upon the original, and the fact that
lead singer Brian Vollmer can out dance any of the girls. For proof,
check out the PG rated version featuring one of the man's famous
somersaults, which is slowed down for the most epic effect.

From then on, I ended up picking up a
vinyl copy of their 1984 album, “Walkin' the Razor's Edge,” which
featured “Gimme Gimme” and it was solid love after that. Each
subsequent album bought just got better with nary a bum track. Given
that we're talking about a band that continued to make solid rock &
roll in the bloated waters that were the 1980's, this is an amazing
fact. Hard rock and metal bands that once had some modicum of
integrity sold their souls to Satan to create chart topping “power
ballads.” (Ironic name for something that usually lacked power or
any kind, unless you count the power to suck ass.)

A huge part of my love for this band is
also the feeling that these are guys that truly love what they do.
When artists, whether it is poets, actors or musicians alike, are
genuinely into what they are expressing, then they will never play
you for cheap. Seeing some Madison Avenue friendly “rockers” like
the aforementioned Bon Jovi, complete with perfect hair, white teeth
and insipid music that plays it as safe as any boy band, is so
depressing. Helix, even in the spandex and fringe era were defiantly
unpretty, with Vollmer almost gleefully displaying his missing tooth
in at least a few videos (“Rock You” immediately comes to mind.)
That is way more sexy than the ole bait and switch of much of the
fare that passed as rock back in the days of MTV.

Speaking of which, everyone needs to
kill any nostalgia they may have for MTV. Sure they used to play
music videos but keep in mind they would usually play the same five
clips over and over again. While you would patiently wait, hoping to
maybe catch a glance of something actually good, whether it was
Siouxsie & the Banshees or Motorhead, you would have to endure 8
hours of the latest Whitney Houston video. Don't let the haze of age
cloud your memory, folks. MTV sucks now but it kind of sucked back
then too.

Something that definitely does not suck
is the sheer tenacity of Helix, especially in the form of the man,
Brian Vollmer. Despite line-up changes, losing a key member with the
untimely passing of guitarist and song writer Paul Hackman in 1992,
being mugged and, at one point, having his vocal chords heavily
damaged only to get back to full singing capacity by learning the
classical vocal technique of Bel Canto, the man has still kept the
band alive and kicking.

Even better, while they may remain a
cult band here in the States, Helix has had some resurgence in their
native Canada thanks to the brilliant television show, “Trailer
Park Boys.” If a show as great as “Trailer Park Boys” can show
some love to Helix, so can you.

For more information on Helix, check out their official website: www.planethelix.com